


Murderer

by VincentMeoblinn



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen, Murder, Plotting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:44:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VincentMeoblinn/pseuds/VincentMeoblinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p> Everyone Sherlock loves is dying around him, but who is the murderer?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Murderer

 

 

 

Sherlock held his hand over the wound and shouted up the stairs.

“A little help here! Somebody get an ambulance!”

“What are you going on about now, Sherl… Jesus Christ! Donovan! Get an ambulance here! Now! The fuck happened, Sherlock?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean _you don’t know_?!”

“I don’t know! I didn’t _see_ anything! He was behind me and he just… he just suddenly said my name and I turned around and… fuck! Help me with this! I can’t get it staunched.”

“I can’t believe _you_ missed something.”

Lestrade muttered as he left off propping John’s head up under a jacket and started helping Sherlock put pressure on the wound in his chest. John was pale and growing more so, his chest struggling to rise to gasp in air as they pushed down on it to stop the blood that was pulsing out of it.

“He’s going to bleed out,” Sherlock whispered, the realization horrifying. An artery. The knife must have hit an artery.

How had this even happened? John was behind him. He’d heard no sounds: no footsteps, no slice through the air, no scuffle, no _shliiick_ as the knife buried itself between his ribs. John had simply gasped out his name, his voice trembling in horror, and then crumpled to the ground with blood spurting from his chest.

And Sherlock had _missed it._ He hadn’t just missed _something_ , he’d missed _everything;_ he’d missed the most crucial everything of all: the moment John had needed him to protect him.

Sherlock’s mind reeled and he spent the next several hours in a daze similar to morphine high. He was aware of his surroundings and able to react, but everything seemed surreal and sluggish. They wheeled John into the ambulance. He rode along, but was relegated to ‘out of the way’. He watched the wheel him into the OR, but his skin was chalky white. Sherlock didn’t need to hear them return and explain to him that John had died in the ambulance: he’d known without feeling the pulse stop. That was the tragedy of spending more time with corpses than people. Death, with his many faces, was no stranger to Sherlock Holmes.

The detective who had failed to detect the most important event in his life staggered home, barely able to walk for the heavy weight of his heart. He staggered upstairs and raided his sock drawer with shaking hands. He almost _couldn’t_ pull out the false bottom, but when he did get it out he was relieved to see Mycroft still hadn’t located his latest stash. He dumped it on the bed, the very act of preparing the drugs steadying his hands as he tapped the needle.

Mycroft never could move silently, but he could move _quickly_ , and he was at Sherlock’s side pulling the needle from his hand in an instant. They tussled on the floor, snarling and swearing at each other, getting tangled in Mycroft’s discarded brolly. It got, perhaps, more violent than Sherlock meant it to. Certainly the needle being plunged into his brother’s leg was the last thing he intended, but the deed was done. Mycroft shouted in alarm, then his pupils dilated and he gave Sherlock an absolutely betrayed look as he began to convulse.

Sherlock rolled Mycroft onto his side, scrambled for his mobile but couldn’t find it nearby.

“John! JOHN! I need my mobile now! JOHN!” Sherlock shouted, and then stilled in horror, “Oh, gods, he’s not… I’ll be back. Keep breathing, I’ll be back!”

Sherlock scrambled to find his mobile, shouting down into the hall for Mrs. Hudson, but to no avail. He calculated roughly twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds before he located his phone and dialed 999. He rushed back into the bedroom but Mycroft was unconscious and twitching slightly. Sherlock checked his pulse to find it racing violently, his heartbeat visible, rivulets of sweat ran down his face and neck, his complexion was mottled, and his breathing shallow.

“Please, I need an ambulance. My brother’s been given a dose of cocaine. It was too high for him, he’s overdosing.”

Sherlock felt certain his heart would stop when Mycroft’s breathing failed. He wiped the sick from the man’s mouth, held his own vomit at bay, and attempted CPR. He managed it twice before turning aside and becoming violently ill. He wiped his mouth off on his expensive shirtsleeve and tried again.

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare leave me, too! Please!”

The ambulance arrived and attempted resuscitation. They got no pulse even with the crash cart, not even a blip. Sherlock sat in the corner on the floor and sobbed every time Mycroft’s body jolted off the floor, rocking back and forth in his vomit and blood covered clothing. They took Mycroft away at the same moment Lestrade walked into the flat, his face pale.

“I heard it on the radio… I heard… Oh, gods, My…” Lestrade sobbed, as he walked into Sherlock’s room and saw him on the floor, “What happened?”

“Accident,” Sherlock choked, “He was trying to stop me… We fought… Oh, gods, I killed my brother!”

“Jesus!” Lestrade breathed in horror, and then his eyes grew wide and alarmed.

Sherlock watched in misery, not really caring, as Lestrade backed away from him. A few hours later he returned with a different officer. Lestrade was crying, but Sherlock was too busy being arrested to bother with his feelings. Arrested for John and Mycroft’s _murder_. They led him down the stairs where crime scene tape was stretched across Mrs. Hudson’s door.

“What happened?!” Sherlock shouted, trying frantically to free himself and head towards the door.

“Detective Inspector Dimmock?” Gregson called out, “I think I’ve got _your_ killer here, too.”

“No. No!” Sherlock screamed over and again, but it was all too true and they led Mrs. Hudson past him in a body bag, the outline of which fit her dimensions perfectly.

Lestrade was outside when Sherlock was being pushed into the police car. He could see the man sobbing in Donovan’s arms, and the devastated look he threw towards Sherlock spoke volumes. The siren sounded a moment to let the rubberneckers know they were moving and the panda wagon turned into traffic. They grilled him for hours; wanting to know why he’d done it, demanding a confession, trying to convince him it would go easier for him if he just owned up.

When Lestrade committed suicide Sherlock found out before his family had because Dimmock came barreling through the door screaming that Sherlock might as well have pulled the trigger himself. Sherlock stared at Dimmock in horror, too agonized to respond as fresh tears welled up at this new nightmare. Sherlock did the only thing his taxed mind could manage: he fainted.

It was hours later that he awoke in a holding cell, a medic standing over him pronouncing him fit. Then it was back into a black and white and he was taken to a facility he knew all too well. MI5 wanted him to answer for Mycroft’s death.

Sherlock was strapped into a chair and the first question was actually a punch rather than a question, but he answered it anyway.

“It was an accident! He tackled me and I had a needle in my hand!”

“I _might_ believe you, if it weren’t for these.”

Before Sherlock’s eyes were laid out the object of his demise and he could practically see the noose swinging in the breeze for him… not that it mattered anymore. Four pictures, of four markings, in four different areas, all ones he wouldn’t have seen from his vantage point but that a crime scene investigator would locate when they went over the area.

A stamp on the inside-back of John’s collar. Spray paint on the windows across from his flat, facing his bedroom. Marker on the inside of Mrs. Hudson’s door. A carved mark on the barrel of Lestrade’s gun.

**I.O.U.**


End file.
